I am absolutely confident in the evidence backed conclusion that should the Christian God exist then he is a pedophile voyeur.
I do not judge Christians for this, because being blind sided by faith is not a moral crime.
"You don't know Gods plans" is not an answer to the everyday scenario I posed about child abuse. It's an "I don't have an answer, so I am going to revert to my ingrained doublespeak as I've been taught to do". It's a failure to answer, and you would do well to give yourself the dignity of saying "I don't have an answer for your scenario, but I chose to continue to worship this evil child buggering bastard anyway because I chose to believe that if I do not then I will burn for eternity in mythological flames.". That would, at the very least, be a reasoned argument.
Not by atheists or agnostics, no. Good luck being Gay in Uganda though. So your counter point enforces my view that there is a difference between Christianity (a religion) and a Christian (a sheep).
I believe you misunderstood my point but I understand that because I put my quotes in the wrong place and I don't think I made my point well, so I will try again.
You said you don't hold with these "splinter groups", the fact that the church has diverged into factions was a sign that something was wrong.
I was badly pointing out that Christianity is itself a splinter group from the Judaic faith.
If I was present at child abuse, witness to it, and had the power to stop it without fear of retribution, but I then failed to take action then I would have terrible difficulty living with myself. It simply would not happen, so I have to reject your counter point and state again that either your Bible is wrong, or your God does not deserve our worship because I refuse to believe that condoning the actions of child abuse should be worshiped.
I wanted to quote this and comment, simply so that there is something we can agree on. Further education is not a necessity in this world, in fact the way the system is setup in my country now it is simply a mechanism for starting everyone off in debt. That is a separate debate, but see - I only disagree with your bad points
EDIT PS: Please don't assume I am an atheist, I'm agnostic but I do categorically renounce the Abrahamic religions as false, and I've not taken enough drugs in recent times to be Hindi. I find the Church of Jedi to be non-offensive and generally acceptable although I don't believe in it and I've not learned much about the others except unified field theory which I regard as "interesting".
Last edited by Becky Rose, .
I would hardly call 40 million baptists a very small number.
Your rettention ability might show a high IK, IQ is problem solving. To solve a problem against evidence to the contrary (Genesis) you - by definition - prove a low IQ. There is no other way to explain ignoring or denying actual facts and choosing a made up solution because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. I do hope your IQ tests where not the Cattel test.
All of the above, but without malicious intent.
This belief that Christians - a majority group in the West - are persecuted is propaganda. Further evidence that the church can spin a lie and people will believe it. It's not fashionable to hate Christianity, and it certainly is not fashionable to hate Christians (there is a clear difference). Hating Christianity is a rational process, hating Christians would be dumb.
If you where of certain denominations then yes you would have a need to appologise, along with some immediate repenting! The acts of the Catholic church are simply outright evil, their policy on condoms is nothing short of murder. The Baptist cult actively campaigns against civil rights in my country, and instructs it's members to directly confront those it disagrees with and demands them to change (I've experienced this myself). These cults have a LOT to apologise for, and if you support them - then so would you.
So you're Jewish...
...except you aren't. Isn't it a bit late in the day to be reading and believing 4th century Roman propaganda?
The brain has many facets, but I chose to believe that you are not a lost cause. Maybe you will work out why Christianity exists, or put some rational thought in to why religions are not universal despite centuries of missionary activity across the globe (and it is a globe btw).
It's a dimension, not matter.
Your last sentence here is intelligent, although I think more along the lines of a long period event than the Rapture.
Your other ramblings on time are a little strange, Christianity asserts that Humans are the purpose of creation, Earth is the centre of all things (and ironically given your earlier statement about the speed of light, it is the centre of the observable universe - but that's easily misconstrued so lets not go there just now). My point being, Christianity has a very clearly defined frame of reference for time. It's not abstracted, it's not intangible. According to Christian doctrine Humans - who live on 1 planet - have a defined and fixed frame of reference for the passage of time upon which a day is a day is a day...
Was this reference to days metaphorical? Well that would screw up the concept of the Sabbath wouldn't it :P...
I have just this to say...
The Bible says that God is:
omnipotent (all powerful)
omnipresent (everywhere)
omniscient (sees everything)
Which means he is present at, and witness to child abuse with the power to stop it.
Yet he chooses not too. Voluntarily allowing an innocent to suffer.
What kind of a bastard does that?
Either your God does NOT deserve worship, or your bible is wrong.
You're bible is also wrong in Genesis, as you've already freely admitted.
So if we remove Genesis - which itself is a compilation of 3 earlier books which was allegedly done by Moses. Which clearly indicates Moses as a fraud. Then we add that your God condones Child abuse (and in the Catholic sect encourages child rape), and frankly even if this God was real - frankly I want nothing to do with him.
Firstly the Big Bang theory is wrong. There is not enough lithium in the universe. There is insufficient dark matter so make up the missing matter, so that theory is likely wrong too.
Secondly science cannot answer the big questions, it relies on an impartial observer. We already know that the observer is part of the question.
Thus, to answer the big questions all we have is theology.
This is damaging to the world, theology is a force for evil in our world. But we need it because many people require answers to something that cannot be answered and they believe that knowing AN answer - even a scientifically disproven one like the Christian faith is better than not knowing an answer.
There is no rational thought process which can lead to belief in proven falsehood. Therefor faith is scientific evidence of stupidity, and I treat it as such.
Secondly science cannot answer the big questions, it relies on an impartial observer. We already know that the observer is part of the question.
Thus, to answer the big questions all we have is theology.
This is damaging to the world, theology is a force for evil in our world. But we need it because many people require answers to something that cannot be answered and they believe that knowing AN answer - even a scientifically disproven one like the Christian faith is better than not knowing an answer.
There is no rational thought process which can lead to belief in proven falsehood. Therefor faith is scientific evidence of stupidity, and I treat it as such.
A degree is insufficient qualification to be a software engineer. You only get the skill from doing it, it's never been taught to a minimally acceptable standard. You prove it with a portfolio, and you get that portfolio by getting your arse in front of a screen and coding. Not learning to write essays or firing off bullshit at interview.
The thought that I would just need a degree to do my job is frankly insulting. I hire graduates and it takes years to train them. They're not good enough by a very long way. They are quite cheap but it takes 4 to 7 graduates to do the amount of work I do and then their work quality is frequently lacking. It's more efficient to employ experienced people, and then mix in a few trainees to invest in our future. I couldn't care if they have a degree or not, I don't even read CV's. I look at portfolio's, and I hack and exploit them to pieces.
The thought that I would just need a degree to do my job is frankly insulting. I hire graduates and it takes years to train them. They're not good enough by a very long way. They are quite cheap but it takes 4 to 7 graduates to do the amount of work I do and then their work quality is frequently lacking. It's more efficient to employ experienced people, and then mix in a few trainees to invest in our future. I couldn't care if they have a degree or not, I don't even read CV's. I look at portfolio's, and I hack and exploit them to pieces.
Not everyone who works in software knocks up computer games. My day job involves building software for commerce, systems that take credit cards. If something goes wrong the potential is there for thousands of peoples lives to be ruined, and it's a responsibility I take very seriously.
Some software engineers work on mission critical systems for hospitals, space flights, heck even nuclear missiles are controlled by software written in AMA.
Software runs the world now and there aren't enough geeks to go around. As a programmer you are both system architect, and the one holding the screw driver.
It absolutely is a form of engineering.
As for degrees, it is my view that the universities have never quite got a handle on the subject of being a programmer. A degree is NOT ENOUGH.
I'm sorry your own job is unfulfilled, but let's not tar everyone with the same lack of self esteem eh
You do realise that Canada has more police per head of population than America, right?
Welcome to the industry.
May I recommend you also learn marketing. You'll need it.
Start here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi ... ef=nosim/permissionmarket
Daily Mail is not a reliable source for anything, it's a sensationalist comic considered as satire by those with an IQ above 100, like Fox "News (laugh)" in the US.
OGL is something else entirely, there are a number of architectural changes when migrating a DX game to an OGL platform.
For a start, all the maths are backwards and upside down... Literally, if you hold out your hand and with thumb pointing up, index finger pointing toward the other hand, and the next finger pointing forwards these are your three 3 dimensional axis... OGL uses one hand, and DX uses the other.
And that's the easy problem to fix
I had a go at putting a team together for a motion simulator chair, but the project fell to pieces when the hardware guy had a death in the family and the firmware guy moved to Ireland. And that was that...!
Yes and no, it depends upon investment level and at the indi level what you expect to get back from it. I treat my game development as a hobby, it is what I WANT to do with my evenings. Having said that, I still have a budget, and a rough business plan. I am after all also a reasonably successful business woman despite my left leaning tendencies *stares Intrepid hard in the eye*
I look at this the other way around, to play safe is to play it dangerous. Churning out more of the same and avoiding innovation never works in a developed market. Games are now a mature market, they are mainstream. The only people who can play safe now are the elephants in the room. The rest of us HAVE to innovate, if we don't then we are dead in the water because nobody will hear us making a splash. Our products have to be remarkable (that is to say, worthy of people passing comment on it's features) because if they aren't then no matter how much we spam You Tube, we're just peddling something the world has already seen.
Yes, and this is a problem of small teams attempting big projects. It's one of the reasons why they fail - that and not having the technical capability to pull off their ambitions. It's the thing that scares me the most, which is why from the word go I was aiming at DX11 - because by the time I finish, that'll be entry level! As for tablets and platform, well for me it's a hobby so that pretty much decided it - but if I was tackling it purely as a business then I would have gone cross platform as it is the only sensible approach these days, that pretty much locks you into developing with products like Unity which I didn't want to do.
Thank you kindly, and I think I answered the question above
.Well I did have a play with prototyping an RTS before I made my final decision on the RPG, it was DX9 based and I never got as far as adding custom shaders to it, but just to frustrate your urge to zerg - here's some juice shots of a game that you'll never get to play ;P... (please consider it's prototype quality graphics not a production draft)
Charge!
Death from Above
Chomp chomp chomp
Epic Battle
There are limitations in DX9 and potential to do things in DX11 that DX9 simply cannot do.
New technology doesn't happen just for the benefit of sales. It's also extending the boundaries of what is possible.
Given the rate of progress of LFS, or indeed any game put together by a small team these days, aiming for DX9 now means that by the time it is finished then it will be more than the one generation behind that DX9 already is. DX9 only goes up to pixel shader 3. DX11 is on pixel shader 5... There's a lot of things PS5 can do that PS3 cannot, just in terms of the complexity of the branching within the shader for a start, let alone actual billboard catching headlines like tessellation (not actually part of PS, but still a DX11 advantage).
I have a couple of DX11 machines, I run the latest games on maximum resolution and settings at full tilt and they look amazing and run smoothly... The thing is, one of those machines is a two year old mid range laptop. And many games are taking advantage of DX11 features and then dropping down to DX9 when that is all that is available.
I don't understand the "entry level machines" argument. It's not like Windows XP was something special that should be cherished.
It doesn't need polys it needs a bump map. I suppose you could tesselation but Scawen already ruled out DX11.
Bump mapping will barely move the system requirements, and trick you into thinking its higher detail than it is.
It requires a shader, and Scawen has suggested he will be going DX9, which does support some shaders.
The LFS fascination with entry level computers from a decade ago does baffle me. I've bought two entirely different machines since I stopped playing LFS over half a decade ago...
It's like the sim racing antique shop.
Bump mapping will barely move the system requirements, and trick you into thinking its higher detail than it is.
It requires a shader, and Scawen has suggested he will be going DX9, which does support some shaders.
The LFS fascination with entry level computers from a decade ago does baffle me. I've bought two entirely different machines since I stopped playing LFS over half a decade ago...
It's like the sim racing antique shop.
Thanks, I'm hoping to get to alpha before the end of the year assuming I can keep up the progress (read: continue to abstain from alcohol and sex) until year end.
I don't understand why someone would go to all the effort to make a game - which I can assure you is a LOT of HARD work - then use that time and skill to go and do something so totally generic and without originality that nobody who's ever played more than a handful of computer games would see any reason to play it.
I really don't.
I really don't.
It's my understanding that the Guinness sold in Ireland does not meet our water quality standards so UK Guinness is brewed in London, apparently it does not taste as nice. I'm no expert on stout or anything else served in a pint glass - so I'll leave it at that for others to give their 2p worth.
As for quaint oldy-worldy type pubs there's bound to be a few but if you want the whole American Warewolf experience then you'll probably have to get far enough away from London that the bar staff no longer have an Australian accent. Stop off on your way between cities in any village who's name ends in "well", and you've probably hit the rural jackpot. The village will be just like London, but more SUV's - but the pubs will be practically unlit and if you sniff the upholstery you'll still smell the tobacco from before the ban 7 years ago.
I made the mistake of trying to drive in London a month or two ago, to South Kensington Town Council.
After paying £45 a day for parking, I now regret this.
There are lots of cool places in London. For a night out Soho and Camden are great. Although it's hard to recommend a particular pub or club without knowing your interests.
Hamley's is wicked - it's like being reminded how to be a child again.
If you are into the arts then Covent Garden can be pretty good, especially if you take in a show. Speaking of the thesbian arts, I've been meaning to check out the Queen musical on Tottenham Court Road for years, it'll probably be closed by the time I get around to it - if you take that in let me know what it's like
.Don't try and take in the real London. It's mostly just houses. Stick to popular touristy bits that's way better
I wish I could remember the name of the Vietnamese restaurant I went to near Soho because it was amazing, but unfortunately Google search brings up 6 of them - so that'd be pot luck !
There are some main attractions of course:
Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. I find them a bit dull myself but when I've been showing jolly foreigners around they seem amazed by soldiers on guard who aren't allowed to speak *shrug* whatever floats your boat really.
The London Eye: at £30 for a single a ticket... I dunno, I just couldn't find the incentive to go on it. Maybe it's worth it, but they didn't manage to convince me that it was!
Brick Lane and Camden Lock markets are worth checking out if in the area, but personally I would not make a special trip for them.
There's an excellent live music scene in London, see what's on at the Brixton Academy or the Dome. Now called the O2 Academy and the O2 respectively, but no-one calls them that because we're not the shallow sheep that O2 thinks we are. Having said that, my phone is on O2... Damn! Check ticketmaster.com for tickets.
As for Manchester, I am not qualified to answer.
When in London I use the tube, it's not that expensive, fast, reliable, reasonably safe and runs fairly late. And you get to talk to weird preachers for all sorts of crazy shit - but aside them remember the unspoken social protocol - BRITS DONT TALK TO EACH OTHER! It's a rule.
I hang around because I have a great deal of admiration for what Scawen has achieved, a life style based on his hobby and a working environment where he doesn't get two major crushes over the Christmas period (I do love my job, but there are limits...).
I see Vic every year and consider him a friend. And I even once had a PM from Eric (before that I wasn't even sure he spoke English!).
-*-
For me to get into playing a game again I have to be able to mod it (I did a lot of mods for LFS), and right now my focus is on graphics and shaders. LFS has an old DX engine and no shaders, and the game architecture is only moddable at the server level. It's not like other games where you can take a game built for high fantasy and rebuilt it for Star Wars or something.
Currently I'm actively developing my own game, there is a part of me that hopes I might achieve something similar to what Scawen has, although I know my game is the wrong genre, wrong platform, and despite the odd Christmas double-crunch I do love my job.
I see Vic every year and consider him a friend. And I even once had a PM from Eric (before that I wasn't even sure he spoke English!).
-*-
For me to get into playing a game again I have to be able to mod it (I did a lot of mods for LFS), and right now my focus is on graphics and shaders. LFS has an old DX engine and no shaders, and the game architecture is only moddable at the server level. It's not like other games where you can take a game built for high fantasy and rebuilt it for Star Wars or something.
Currently I'm actively developing my own game, there is a part of me that hopes I might achieve something similar to what Scawen has, although I know my game is the wrong genre, wrong platform, and despite the odd Christmas double-crunch I do love my job.
I wrote my first computer game in that year but I missed out on punch cards.
I didn't start as an I.T. professional until the 80386 was around, VGA had just about established itself as the future of computer graphics and finally the PC was getting computer games worth playing - although apart from Wing Commander I can't think of any that where actually better on a PC than a 16bit.
But Wing Commander was epic. I gather Chris Roberts is finally getting around to writing a new space shooter, the video I saw of it looked very spectacular.
Oh dear I appear to have veered off topic.
Yes. Yay internet. Internet all the things etc.
I never managed to get rain in LFS though did I?
Is there a Kiwk Fit level where you get to charge double, substitute (and charge extra for) premium parts over quoted budget ones going mysteriously out of stock on customers arrival, and unnecessary and non existent jobs are necessary for the customers safety. It would be kind of like an entire game level of Konkani cheat codes...?
New tracks. I'm just bored stiff of the ones in LFS. I have a preference for short circuit racing and that limits the selection to a handful in tracks in three environments with some shared corners. Ugh.
In terms of physics, I don't care about tyres. LFS' tyre physics are good already. I think the aero physics are a little lacking but it's not the end of the world - what I would really like to see is an environment simulation (track and air temperature, localised circuit factors, moisture in the morning, local circuit nuances etc), but I've been over that topic to death and it transpires that I'm the only one who doesn't think tyres are the be all and end all of race sims.
For me to come back there needs to be enough "new" within LFS that I feel compelled to spend money on getting a new wheel and make time for playing/modding more games in my lifestyle.
Currently I get more joy making my own game (not a race sim).
I only remember two of those names, and one of them was a very quick driver who was blemished by being a complete jerk off on a personal level - (so I'll avoid names!).
I feel like an old timer, but I've a way to go before It'll be my tenth anniversary...
I stopped racing a long time ago though, I got bored of the tracks. Ocassionally I do some flaffing around with insim but I have no desire to make a new CTRA although I have half an interest in making a new STCC style series. Maybe. Possibly. One day.
Over the last few years I have toyed a few times with writing my own race sim - but I am just not interested enough in physics to make it happen.
I still have a lot of respect for what Scawen has done here, and how he has forged a living doing what he wants to do and made a very enjoyable game to play - but I got bored of the content a very long time ago.
I feel like an old timer, but I've a way to go before It'll be my tenth anniversary...
I stopped racing a long time ago though, I got bored of the tracks. Ocassionally I do some flaffing around with insim but I have no desire to make a new CTRA although I have half an interest in making a new STCC style series. Maybe. Possibly. One day.
Over the last few years I have toyed a few times with writing my own race sim - but I am just not interested enough in physics to make it happen.
I still have a lot of respect for what Scawen has done here, and how he has forged a living doing what he wants to do and made a very enjoyable game to play - but I got bored of the content a very long time ago.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG